Tell me how to play Sylvanas

[masterdisaster]

The #1 skill you need for playing any specialist, sylvanas included, will be to know if you can turn the tide in a team fight. Can they win without me? If yes, push. If no, ask Can they win with me? If yes, go. If no, push. There will always be people who blame you for not coming to a team fight but that doesn't mean that you would have made a difference.

[Lesane]

There is almost no endgame situation where a team pushing will get any further with Sylvanas than it would have without. By that time shots from towers are doing nothing at all anyway and keeps die in seconds.

Mid-game, as I mentioned before, is about the only time where you can actually get some use out of her trait, because keep fire might actually do a little damage, but you're high enough level that you can get a decent push in. Even then, minions often take the brunt of the fire anyway, or the other team is wiped so you eat the damage and finish off the keep anyway.

These scenarios where somehow you're getting a massive advantage because you're having a character spend a good chunk of their attention stopping a keep from firing just don't actually happen. Or at least so rarely that the complaints about it seem silly.

If you wipe an enemy team but you are all low on mana/health and lost a few team members too, or if you only managed to kill a few of the enemy team but not all, then Sylvanas allows you to get a keep whereas normally you would have to hearthstone to heal or fight against a keep and the remaining enemy team, which can often make up for a dead member or 2. There's tons of scenarios where her trait just puts in work. It remains valuable all throughout the game. It's blatantly obvious that her trait is one of the best in the game and allows her and her team to do things no one else can do. The simple threat of the trait is enough, even if you can't get a lot of use out of it, just like E.T.C. Mosh Pit.

I mean, if you say that Sylvanas' trait is not that big of a deal, you might as well never fight over Cursed Hollow tributes because her trait is literally the same shit as a Cursed Hollow curse except that it's concentrated in one lane and not all across the map, but it's applicable on maps besides Cursed Hollow so that makes up for that downside. With Unstable Poison minion waves might as well be at 1 HP and buildings not firing is the obvious effect of her trait.

Is it broken or imbalanced? I wouldn't go as far, but it's definitely one of the best traits.

[Deleted]

Team fights can be a lot more decisive if the subsequent push is a lot stronger thanks to Sylvanas.

Must be sylvanas, the only specialist to negate turret fire.....

Gazlowe turrets
Zagara's minions
azmodans minions
Sgt Hammers range
Murky's stacking damage, invulnerability, and heal, and close respawn

All specialists are great at dealing with structures. And all are great at dealing with them post team fight.

She's no different.

[Simulacrum]

Curse is far different from Sylvanas' trait. They're not even comparable. :O

Her trait instantly kills minions and disables buildings. They do effectively the same thing, just concentrated around her instead of everywhere on the map.

[Lesane]

Must be sylvanas, the only specialist to negate turret fire.....

Gazlowe turrets
Zagara's minions
azmodans minions
Sgt Hammers range
Murky's stacking damage, invulnerability, and heal, and close respawn

All specialists are great at dealing with structures. And all are great at dealing with them post team fight.

She's no different.

The turrets and minions only eat a few shots and Sgt. Hammer's range does nothing for the rest of the team.

[Post]

The #1 skill you need for playing any specialist, sylvanas included, will be to know if you can turn the tide in a team fight. Can they win without me? If yes, push. If no, ask Can they win with me? If yes, go. If no, push. There will always be people who blame you for not coming to a team fight but that doesn't mean that you would have made a difference.

This is my struggle right now. Everyone says it's all about sticking with your team but as Murky when I see them fighting a couple people and there's a giant group of adds in our base do I not help push back the adds/get camps? I'm really new to this game so I don't know much about how this works. I know my stun ulti is great for team fights but I'm not sure how much I can really do outside of that.

[Lesane]

Not even close. Pressure on 3 lanes is kinda the point of the curse. Just because there's a similar function (stops a turret from firing) doesn't make the actual effect or use of the two related at all. To suggest that misses the point entirely.

Sylvanas' trait makes her so dangerous that you can put more pressure on other lanes even if the enemy team tries to prevent her from doing anything.

Indeed, turret fire is almost always a non-factor anyway. Everything else is eating it most of the time you're sitting under one anyway, or else you're high enough level that the damage is completely pointless.

This imaginary version of the game where turrets always do tons of damage and there's no way around it and only Sylvanas can stop them just doesn't exist.

It's not the damage of turrets, it's the constant slow. And to assume that you always have minions tanking the tower shots is just bs, especially if there's 1 or 2 heroes of the enemy team around to kill the minions.

This is my struggle right now. Everyone says it's all about sticking with your team but as Murky when I see them fighting a couple people and there's a giant group of adds in our base do I not help push back the adds/get camps? I'm really new to this game so I don't know much about how this works. I know my stun ulti is great for team fights but I'm not sure how much I can really do outside of that.

Will they be fine without you? Do mercs/(de)push. Do they need you to win? Help them. Is it a lost cause regardless? Do mercs/(de)push. Can you offset them losing with taking a fort/keep? Do it, unless it's late game.

[Simulacrum]

Not even close. Pressure on 3 lanes is kinda the point of the curse. Just because there's a similar function (stops a turret from firing) doesn't make the actual effect or use of the two related at all. To suggest that misses the point entirely.

So... by "not even close" you mean "I agree completely"? Because that's what you just did... you just then dismissed the point by asserting that the curse effect counts for nothing unless it's global, which is obviously crap. The curse is 3 times as strong, yes, but 1/3rd of that is still 1/3rd of that.

[Lesane]

You might as well say that the every hero is "just like that map mechanic on Spider Queen" then. Because all it does is push forward and attack stuff, and that's all that heroes do, right?

The assertion that Sylvanas is somehow the same as the curse on Hollow just because she shuts off towers is missing the point so much that it's hard to even know where the discussion could go after that. Then again, pretty much everyone claiming that shutting off towers is a big deal is already missing the point to begin with.

Well, coincidentally the mechanic on ToSQ is arguably the weakest one out of all maps. I mean, the trait is like the first thing people mention about Sylvanas when discussing her balance in the game, pro players included. I've heard stuff like "she breaks the fundamental concept of the game" being thrown around by said players.

Her trait is super strong because every other hero needs to push waves to take down buildings or get a high enough level where they can face tank and outheal/DPS it in some cases, like Thrall. Sylvanas doesn't need to push anything and can literally kill a keep at level 1 as long as she gets the opportunity to. Of course that never happens and is an extreme example, but she's the only hero who not only gets close to being able to do it but is actually able to do it. There are plenty of scenarios where her trait allows her team to do some shit they couldn't do without Sylvanas. Because the whole "turrets/forts are bad and you should let minions tank them and not yourself" concept is thrown out of the window with her trait.